TOTE THAT BARGE, LIFT THAT CANOE: Celebrating Earth Day, the Princeton Chapter of N.J. Community Water Watch and assorted volunteers turned up at Turning Basin Park Saturday for the D&R Canal Canoe Cleanup. Trashbags, gloves, and canoes were provided and all volunteers received a free lunch.

Front Page

Linda Arntzenius

Princeton Borough Council met last night (after Town Topics press time) to approve, among other agenda items, a new ordinance relating to fire safety permits and increases in the costs of fire safety inspection fees.

Ellen Gilbert

Monday’s Township Committee meeting was noteworthy for its unusual police presence, and for its brevity.

Police officers Michael R. Cifelli and Christopher J. Morgan, surrounded by their families (including Mr. Morgan’s three-week old daughter), were sworn in as sergeants by township attorney Edward Schmierer. A number of “our finest,” as Mayor Phyllis Marchand put it, were in attendance, including former Police Chief Anthony R. Gaylord.

Linda Arntzenius

In spite of the mental health concerns that had been raised about Virginia Tech student Seung Hui Cho in childhood and adolescence, the school was unprepared on April 16, 2007, when Mr. Cho killed himself and 32 others and injured at least 24 more. The incident stands as the deadliest in history for an institution of higher education. Why, given the warning signs, was the tragedy not prevented? And what can be learned from it for the future?

Other News

Stuart Mitchner

Money may not grow on trees but, according to a Princeton University senior from Istanbul, wishes do. While there were no wish trees at last year’s Communiversity, somewhere between then and now wishes and money came together on campus at 185 Nassau Street in the form of the Lewis Center of the Arts and in town at the corner of Witherspoon and Paul Robeson Place, where the new Arts Center is emerging from the chrysalis of its reconstruction.

Ellen Gilbert

The bread being broken at the Princeton Public Library cafe will have a different source beginning late Spring. After reviewing responses to its recent call for proposals, members of the PPL Board voted last Tuesday night to accept the plan submitted by the Terra Momo Restaurant Group.

Ellen Gilbert

“The writer experiences an event like a stone tossed into water,” said young adult books author Ann Turner as she began her recent workshop on historical fiction with seventh grade students at Princeton Day School.

Book Review

Stuart Mitchner

Today is William Shakespeare’s 444th birthday. It’s also the 392nd anniversary of his death. Little has been made of the fact that he died on the day he was born (such phrasing might have amused Hamlet or any of Shakespeare’s philosophical cynics), that being April 23, 1616.

The Bard’s birthday partners make an odd lot: Sandra Dee and Shirley Temple, Vladimir Nabokov and Warren Spahn, J.P. Donleavy, Bernadette Devlin, and Roy Orbison. While most creative people would surely enjoy the idea of sharing a birthday with the deity of creation Berlioz prayed to (“Thou alone for the souls of artists art the living and loving God”), Nabokov seems to have been the only one to have gone on record to that effect by welcoming the Gregorian/Julian calendar shift that gave him the same birth-date. He was born under the Julian calendar on April 10, 1899, which at the time would have been April 22 by the Gregorian calendar — except that Russia remained on the Julian calendar until 1918, and by then the Gregorian date equivalent to April 10 had shifted to April 23. On his 72nd birthday, he referred to his longevity as “a feat of lucky endurance, of paradoxically detached willpower, of good work and good wine, of healthy concentration on a rare bug, or a rhythmic phrase.” Knowing Nabokov, the play on “Will” in “willpower” was no accident.

Music/Theater

Donald Gilpin

Mary Zimmerman’s theatrical adaptations of The Odyssey, Argonautika (Jason’s Heroic Quest for the Golden Fleece), traditional fairy tales (The Secret in the Wings) and the myths of Ovid’s Metamorphoses have won her international acclaim as a playwright and director,

Nancy Plum

This is the time of year at Princeton University for performances dedicated to and honoring Princetonians gone by. Next weekend the University Orchestra will present its annual Stuart Mindlin concerts and this past Friday night, the University Glee Club, director by Richard Tang Yuk, performed its annual concert honoring former Glee Club conductor Walter Nollner.